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Sunday, 20 July 2014

Well, this is the project that made the movies exciting. After two rehashmovies, the third is the payoff – something exciting! Something all-new that
advances the Madokaworld. But once you’ve made your main character a
god erased from all history, where do you go? How do you enhance such a neatly
wrapped-up story?

Well, you subvert it, of course!

If I’m honest, there were a few things in the
third of this movie series – and the only one that’s all original material –
that disappointed me. I thought the world we were shown at the end of the Maoka
series was worth exploring, and though this story nodded to that, it was
set somewhere quite different. In many ways, the writing is deeply lazy – when you
effectively create a character that has the powers of a god, plus an alien race
with indistinguishable-from-magic sci-fi technology, you end up with a world where
anything at all can happen, and you don’t need much logical consistency or detailed
world-building. You can make time paradoxes, and have characters who are
removed from timelines to fight alongside a godlike entity for no better reason
than she quite likes to have them around. It’s lazy and simplistic and any
problems can be very easily handwaved away.

But at the same time, this kind of story allows
the writers to deliver fanservice by the bucketload. Not sexy fanservice – just
things that the makers of the series would love to see. Characters are dead? Bring
them back to life! An antagonist has gotten a big fanbase? Bring her back, make
her good and reveal her human form! People have a real burning hatred for your
intentionally sinister cutesy mascot? Arrange to have it dismembered, enslaved,
tortured and more!

And while yes, it feels for much of its length
like a cop-out, Rebellion is a hell of a lot of fun.

Everything is wish-fulfilment, by design. All
the magical girls work together in a happy Ojamajo Doremiworld of
bright colours and cooperation. They even have cute sidekicks – Madoka has a
Kyubey who is as cute as it looked like he would be at the start of the
original series, and Mami has Bebe. Bebe, of course, an extra-cute version of
Charlotte the Dessert Witch, able to communicate in weird gibberish that shows
up as floating characters, and a staunch ally of the girls – perhaps the most
enjoyable sequence in the film is where the girls chant a creepy nursery rhyme
that leads to Bebe showing her true power.

Ultimately, Homura is still the main character
and still the one to discover the truth behind this slightly perturbing
alternate universe. Behind it, of course, are the Kyubey race, who having
hypothesised the existence of the Madoka force of nature – which, after all,
Homura told them about at the end of the series – and who want to try to
counteract her wish so that they can tap this far more efficient way of getting
the energy to save the universe. Neat, but not exactly hard to predict.

What comes as a surprise is that Homura has her
own agenda, which is far more selfish than I had ever expected. It makes for
some moral grey areas at the very end of this interesting and twisted story,
and something remarkable that Madoka couldn’t have accounted for. How she is
empowered to do what she does doesn’t really matter – it is poetic and has a
bittersweet beauty.

The third film doesn’t feel necessary. It doesn’t
feel like it completes an otherwise incomplete story. It feels added-on, an
unnecessary appendage. But there’s no doubting that it was deeply enjoyable,
especially for fans.

2 comments:

I still have only watched Rebellion once when I saw it premiere in LA back in December (you should check out my post on the event if you haven't already XD) and kinda felt the same way you do about it: that it didn't feel necessary and even that it overrides the uplifting message of hope the TV series and first two movies left. However, at the same time, it was a lot of fun to watch and had some really great scenes. It's definitely one of those movies I need to see a second time in order to properly judge.

Welcome to Adziu's small corner

Welcome to my little blog, here in this small corner.
Over the years I have seen a few hundred animated series and movies, and the purpose of this blog is to house my impressions. This is not intended to be a daily blog with impressions of each episode: I write my thoughts only after viewing something complete. Several have been imported from previous blogs dating back to 2005 - as well as drawing from journals from as early as 1999!
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